Berkeleyside: Medicaid And SNAP Threats Rattle Alameda County Residents
Service providers in Alameda County are bracing for sweeping impacts of proposed federal cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. The Republicans’ so-called “big, beautiful bill” would add work requirements for Medicaid recipients and cut $267 billion in federal funding over 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. (Orenstein, 5/23)

KVPR: 'I Feel Betrayed.' Dozens Protest After Rep. Valadao Votes To Cut Medicaid
Dozens of people rallied outside the Bakersfield office of Republican Congressman David Valadao on Friday to protest his vote in favor of significant cuts to Medicaid. Valadao’s vote was among the few that helped get a House spending bill over the edge and which government forecasters predict could pull hundreds of billions of dollars away from the Medicaid program – or Medi-Cal, as it’s known in California. (Yeager and Klein, 5/23)

CBS News: House Speaker Mike Johnson Says Medicaid Work Requirements In Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Have A 'Moral Component'
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who shepherded President Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" through Congress, said Sunday that the Medicaid work requirements — which could affect his home state of Louisiana — have a "moral component" to them because people on Medicaid who "refuse" to work are "defrauding the system." "If you are able to work and you refuse to do so, you are defrauding the system," Johnson said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "You're cheating the system. And no one in the country believes that that's right. So there's a moral component to what we're doing. And when you make young men work, it's good for them, it's good for their dignity, it's good for their self-worth, and it's good for the community that they live in." (Linton, 5/26)

AP: USDA Sued For Collecting Personal Data Of SNAP Recipients
Privacy and hunger relief groups and a handful of people receiving food assistance benefits are suing the federal government over the Trump administration’s attempts to collect the personal information of millions of U.S. residents who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., on Thursday says the U.S. Department of Agriculture violated federal privacy laws when it ordered states and vendors to turn over five years of data about food assistance program applicants and enrollees, including their names, birth dates, personal addresses and social security numbers. (Boone, 5/23)

Los Angeles Times: Trump's FCC Delays Multilingual Emergency Alerts For Natural Disasters
California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home. The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts. (Jarvie, 5/26)

Politico: RFK Jr.’s Report Had A Surprise Target: Your Doctor
From food to pharma, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took on all the suspects he’s long maligned in a report on health threats to kids — along with one unexpected one: Doctors. Laced throughout the report from Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Commission are accusations against doctors — for reportedly being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry to overprescribe certain medications and for failing to treat the root causes of disease. (Cirruzzo, 5/23)

Times Of San Diego: Promising Calif. Science Students A Casualty Of Trump Research Cuts
This spring, the National Institutes of Health quietly began terminating programs at scores of colleges that prepared promising undergraduate and graduate students for doctoral degrees in the sciences. At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses lost training grants that provided their students with annual stipends of approximately $12,000 or more, as well as partial tuition waivers and travel funds to present research at science conferences. The number of affected programs is likely higher, as the NIH would not provide CalMatters a list of all the cancelled grants. (Zinshteyn, 5/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area Biotech Company Cuts 55 Jobs, Blames Trump-Era Funding Cuts
A Bay Area biotech company has laid off 55 employees, citing funding cuts linked to policies from the Trump administration — just three months after raising nearly $351 million in funding. In a regulatory notice filed Wednesday, Eikon Therapeutics, based in Millbrae, confirmed that the layoffs would impact nearly 15% of its workforce. The cuts are set to take effect in July. (Vaziri, 5/23)

Becker's Hospital Review: Nurses At 3 California Hospitals Strike For 1 Day
Registered nurses at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center and Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., and Alhambra (Calif.) Hospital Medical Center went on strike May 22, a union spokesperson confirmed to Becker’s. The one-day strike involved nearly 200 nurses at Alhambra Medical Center and nearly 2,200 nurses at the Long Beach facilities, according to the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. (Gooch, 5/23)

Modern Healthcare: Claim Denials Grew As Prior Authorization Rejections Fell In 2024
Health insurance companies initially declined to pay more than one dollar for every $10 providers submitted in claims last year, an increase from 2023. Payers in 2024 initially denied 11.8% of dollars associated with hospital-based claims, according a report from consultant Kodiak Solutions. That compares with 11.53% of dollars denied in 2023. (Tepper, 5/23)

NBC News: Medical Errors Are Still Harming Patients. AI Could Help Change That
Despite ongoing efforts to improve patient safety, it’s estimated that at least 1 in 20 patients still experience medical mistakes in the health care system. One of the most common categories of mistakes is medication errors, where for one reason or another, a patient is given either the wrong dose of a drug or the wrong drug altogether. In the U.S., these errors injure approximately 1.3 million people a year and result in one death each day, according to the World Health Organization. (Cox, 5/25)

Los Angeles Times: Health Clinics Make House Calls On Immigrant Patients Afraid To Leave Home
Across Los Angeles, the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, one community health center is extending its services to immigrant patients in their homes after realizing that people were skipping critical medical appointments because they’ve become too afraid to venture out. St. John’s Community Health, one of the largest nonprofit community healthcare providers in Los Angeles County that caters to low-income and working-class residents, launched a home visitation program in March after learning that patients were missing routine and urgent care appointments because they feared being taken in by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. (Gomez, 5/24)

Los Angeles Times: 4-Year-Old Bakersfield Girl Facing Deportation Could Die Within Days Of Losing Medical Care
Deysi Vargas’ daughter was nearly 2½ when she took her first steps. The girl was a year delayed because she had spent most of her short life in a hospital in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, tethered to feeding tubes 24 hours a day. She has short bowel syndrome, a rare condition that prevents her body from completely absorbing the nutrients of regular food. ... Now in Bakersfield, the family received notice last month that their legal status had been terminated. (Castillo, 5/27)

Voice of San Diego: Four San Diego Councilmembers Want To Buy Time For Midway Shelter
Four San Diego City Councilmembers are calling for funding to provide more ramp-down time for a Midway homeless shelter to keep residents from ending up on the street. Council President Joe LaCava and Councilmembers Henry Foster, Kent Lee and Sean Elo-Rivera are jointly proposing to buy more time for the 150-bed shelter that could otherwise close in coming weeks. (Halverstadt, 5/24)

The Mercury News: Clearing Of San Jose Encampment Raises Questions About Where The Homeless Will Go Without Shelter
Just weeks ago, nonprofit outreach workers approached Robert Emmons and other unhoused residents living along Autumn Parkway to let them know they would be there every day to help them out of their predicament. But in the blink of an eye, the hope they offered disappeared. Emmons awoke some days later to the sound of staple guns discharging, signaling that the homeless residents living on that stretch of the Guadalupe River Trail were now on notice — they only had a little more than a week to leave. (Patel, 5/27)

San Francisco Chronicle: California Disasters Are Leaving One Group More At Risk Than Any Other
In the chaos of a recent California wildfire, Luis Vance Taylor, who works for the governor’s emergency services office, recalled visiting a shelter to check in with evacuees and finding a clutch of older survivors, all disabled in some way, who were hot, sweaty and covered in ash. They were badly in need of a wash, Taylor said. But the portable showers that had arrived at the shelter that day were not accessible to people with disabilities. (Allday, 5/25)

California Healthline: A Ministroke Can Have Major Consequences
What are known as transient ischemic attacks can eventually lead to cognitive declines as steep as those following a full-on stroke, new research finds. (Span, 5/27)

MedPage Today: Funding For 988 Crisis Line Holding Steady For Now
With all of the healthcare funding cuts currently going on in Washington, there is one health service that has survived mostly unscathed -- the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. "As of now, federal funding for 988 is holding steady," said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Washington. According to an HHS "passback" document -- a preliminary budget outline, which was leaked to the press -- the department is planning to hold funding for the crisis line steady at $500 million, but is considering cutting a specialized service by which LGBTQ+ youth who call the crisis line can press a button and be connected to a specially trained counselor, she explained. (Frieden, 5/23)

NBC News: Former Surgeon General Says Congress Has Failed To Protect Children’s Mental Health
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy accused Congress of failing “in its responsibility to protect our kids” from the harms of social media and called on lawmakers to “step up and act now” in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday. Murthy, who served as surgeon general during the Obama and Biden administrations, said he would specifically like to see Congress pass legislation that would force social media apps to include warning labels about their harms to children and would allow for more data transparency from social media companies so that researchers can more accurately study the effects of the internet on kids. (Marquez, 5/25)

The Hill: Former Surgeon General Says Negative Impacts From Loneliness Comparable To Smoking, Obesity
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, in a Sunday interview, warned about the adverse effects of chronic loneliness, which could lead to a shorter lifespan. Murthy, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” told host Kristen Welker that struggling with loneliness and isolation increases the risks of depression, anxiety and suicide, along with the risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia in older adults. “The overall mortality increase that can be related to social disconnection is comparable to the mortality impact of smoking and obesity,” he said. (Limon, 5/25)

ABC News: Measles Cases Reach 1,046 In US As Infections Confirmed In 30 States: CDC
Measles cases have reached 1,046 as the virus continues spreading across the United States, according to data updated Friday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Cases have been confirmed in 30 states including Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. (Kekatos and Tachi Udoh, 5/23)

CBS News: COVID Variant NB.1.8.1 Hits U.S. What To Know About Symptoms, New Booster Vaccine Restrictions
Cases of the new COVID-19 variant NB.1.8.1, linked to a large surge in China, have been detected in multiple locations across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "CDC is aware of reported cases of COVID-19 NB.1.8.1 in China and is in regular contact with international partners," a CDC spokesperson said in a statement last week. The spokesperson said that, so far, too few U.S. sequences have been reported of NB.1.8.1 to be included in the agency's variant estimates dashboard. (Moniuszko, 5/26)

CIDRAP: Study Details Economic Impact Of RSV Infections In Young Children
A study published yesterday in Eurosurveillance highlights the substantial costs associated with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections in children ages 5 and under. ... Costs were assessed from an outpatient healthcare sector and societal perspective, with the results stratified by country and the age-group of children diagnosed as having RSV. (Dall, 5/23)

The Washington Post: More Than 1 In 10 Older Vets Uses Cannabis, Study Finds
More than 1 in 10 veterans ages 65 to 84 used cannabis in the previous month, a new analysis of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) data published in JAMA Network Open suggests. To learn more about cannabis use in older adults, researchers turned to the Veterans Affairs Cannabis and Aging Study, which follows a national cohort of veterans and their cannabis use. The respondents’ mean age was 73.3, and 85.4 percent of them were men. (Blakemore, 5/24)

The Hill: New Contact Lenses Could Allow Vision In The Dark
The new world of contact lenses has arrived: ones that allow individuals to see in the dark with their eyes closed. In the journal Cell, neuroscientists explained how they created contact lenses that make the breakthrough possible by converting infrared light to visible light. Per the research, there is no power source necessary, and the wearers can see both visible and infrared light simultaneously, with the latter increasing when one’s eyes are closed. (Djordjevic, 5/24)

AP: You Should Wear Sunscreen Even If You Have Darker Skin. Here's Why
People with darker skin still need to wear sunscreen — for more reasons than one. Too much ultraviolet exposure from the sun can lead to sunburn, dark spots and wrinkles, and increased risk of skin cancer. The melanin in darker skin offers some extra protection from the sun, but dermatologists say that isn’t enough on its own. (Ramakrishnan, 5/23)